LONDON: Hanna Gedin, a member of the European Parliament, told Arab News that the Israeli government denied her entry this week on political grounds, along with her MEP colleague Jonas Sjostedt.
“Refusing us to enter the West Bank and Palestine, a country that Israel is occupying in violation of international law, indicates that Israel is afraid of what we are going to see,” she said.
Gedin and Sjostedt are from the Left Party in Sweden, where a general election is scheduled for next month. They are the latest EU and UN officials denied entry into Israel, which has taken sweeping measures against critics of its war on the Gaza Strip since late 2023 or those who support sanctions on illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights.
The pair have long been advocates for Palestinian rights, calling Israeli actions in Gaza genocide, where at least 73,431 people have been killed, and 174,437 others have been injured since Oct. 7, 2023.
Black smoke rises following an Israeli strike, carried out after the military warned Palestinian residents to evacuate the area of Maghazi, in the central Gaza Strip, Aug. 23, 2026. (AFP)
Israel’s Interior Ministry denied them entry to a scheduled flight on Sunday night at the request of the Foriegn Minister Gideon Sa’ar due to their calls for international legal action against Israelis implicated in war crimes.
“What we have said is the same things that the UN says and that human rights organizations say, namely that there is a genocide going on in Gaza, that Israel is using starvation as a weapon and that medical personnel and journalists are being deliberately attacked,” Gedin added.
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded in September 2025 that Israel committed four of the five genocidal acts in Gaza defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. Before that, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, as well as Mohammed Deif, a former Hamas commander and mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, who was later killed, for war crimes.
Gedin and Sjostedt planned to visit the West Bank and East Jerusalem to meet with Save the Children activists and Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups. Settler violence against Palestinians in the area increased by 63 percent in the last seven months of 2026 compared to the same period last year.
“The EU should terminate its trade agreement with Israel,” Gedin said, “impose an arms embargo, support the ICC and help bring guilty war criminals to justice in order for a real ceasefire to be able to take place (in Gaza) and then assist in the reconstruction of a free and democratic Palestine.”
Swedish Left Party MEPs Jonas Sjostedt (L) and Hanna Gedin (R) were denied entry to Israel before their planned travel on Sunday night. (Courtesy: @hanna_gedin / @sjostedt35 / Instagram)
The two MEPs have now joined a long list of UN and European officials who have been denied entry to Israel since October 2023, including in 2024 the UN Chief Antonio Guterres, who was declared persona non grata; Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinians; and in 2025 a delegation of 27 French lawmakers who had their visas revoked; and four British MPs from the Labour Party.
On Tuesday, Sa’ar ordered the expulsion of Dutch officials from the Civil Military Coordination Center, located in southern Tel Aviv, after the Netherlands imposed a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements. The CMCC monitors the US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and aid deliveries to Gaza. The Israeli government is also considering expelling British representatives, who have the second-largest personnel after the US in the multinational center, as well as other EU countries for their settlement-related sanctions.
Relations between many EU countries and Israel have already been under increasing stress as a result of its devastation of Gaza and increasing settler violence in the West Bank
Hugh Lovatt, European Council on Foreign Relations
France and the UK, two of Europe’s political and economic heavyweights, recognized Palestinian statehood during a UN conference last September. Sweden announced this in 2014, whereas the Netherlands has not yet done so. Grassroots groups within the Labour Party are increasingly urging UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham to recognize Israeli actions in Gaza as genocide.
Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told Arab News that EU members are not expected to expel Israeli diplomats as a direct countermeasure.
“But Israel’s actions are not likely to deter the Netherlands and others from acting against Israel’s settlements. If anything, Israeli measures will likely be counter-productive, by underscoring the need to hold an increasingly radicalized Israeli government to account for its behavior,” Lovatt said.
He noted that the CMCC has become less relevant in recent months, with European representatives often cut from US-Israeli decision-making. Israeli bombings in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire in October 2025 have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians.
Pro-Palestinian protesters opposing Israel’s participation in the 68th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) demonstrate in Malmo, Sweden, May 11, 2024. (AFP)
Israel has a history of denying entry to individuals who openly criticize its violations of Palestinian rights, based on a series of laws such as the 2011 anti-boycott law targeting activists who back the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. The amended Law for Entry in 2025 prohibits those who publicly advocate for trying Israeli citizens in foreign courts over Gaza war crimes from entering the country.
In 2019, Israel barred US Democratic congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering the country over their criticism of violations against Palestinians. In 2018, Israel tried to bar Dublin’s mayor Micheal Mac Donncha from entering the country but failed because border control misspelled his name. However, Mac Donncha received a letter prohibiting him from entering Israeli territory in the future on his way back to Dublin.
“Relations between many EU countries and Israel have already been under increasing stress as a result of its devastation of Gaza and increasing settler violence in the West Bank,” Lovatt said.
Gedin expects strong protests from the EU and Sweden against Israeli authorities after being denied entry. She hopes that a new Swedish government, after the Sept. 13 elections, will move away from calling Israel’s violence in Gaza “proportionate” and defend international law instead.
“The EU must become tougher in its policy towards the international crimes committed by Israel ... I want to see greater political courage; all countries have a legal obligation to act to prevent genocide. I demand that the EU listen to the millions of people around the world who are protesting against Israel’s impunity,” she told Arab News.
Lovatt noted that the recent entry bans against elected EU lawmakers and the expulsion of Dutch officials from the Gaza monitoring center underscore “Israel’s increasing drift towards pariah status under the far-right government of Benyamin Netanyahu.”
